Are you making health and happiness decisions
based on limiting money beliefs?
Lesson #1: follow your intuition.
I got the text from my dad on Tuesday (yesterday) telling me that he took my mom to the emergency room.
I have been having a nagging feeling for weeks about my mom’s health. She has said that she is tired all the time. She just can’t seem to “get with it.”
I saw her on Saturday and I could see something was wrong. Really wrong. The nagging feeling didn’t go away.
My sister Rochelle and I, who are both “get-shit-done” kind of people and can turn into bossy gals to get it done, insisted that she go to the doctor as soon as she can on Monday.
My mom didn’t want to. She said it was just her blood sugar. We insisted. We were going to drive 90 minutes to take her there ourselves if we had to. We both knew something was really wrong.
The text from my dad confirmed our intuition was right on.
The doctor wasn’t sure how my mom was walking around, her blood count was so low. At any moment, her heart could have just stopped because there wasn’t enough blood to circulate.
Lesson #2: When it’s convenient to not follow your intuition because someone or something else can convince you that it’s not a big deal, take a committed stand for your truth.
We spent the day in the hospital with my mom. Three blood transfusions later and a procedure to find out what was going on, I got to see how money beliefs influence everyday decisions and life-and-death decisions.
This morning I’m at my parents house and cried for a couple of hours. Not even sure why completely. One minute I’m glad my mom is alive and okay. The next minute I’m pissed as hell at some of the interactions that happened at the hospital with experts and the medical system that wasn’t designed for patients to be their own advocates.
I won’t go into details of the hospital conversations because the healing and breakthroughs I had with my family are sacred space. (By the way, I have my mom’s permission to write about this.)
One of the reasons my mom didn’t want to go to the doctor is she didn’t want to spend the money on a doctor’s visit. My mom isn’t a big fan of going to the doctor. She was raised not to be wasteful. She didn’t want to waste the $150 doctor visit on something that didn’t tell her anything.
Lesson #4: Do you live your life to get a discount or to manage your cash flow?
In the middle of getting treatment, the hospital gave my parents the opportunity to pay for the estimated hospital visit in full BEFORE she got discharged for a 40% discount. The guy telling them what payment options said “How would you like to pay the estimated amount in full?”
Thanks to my buddy and money mentor Chris Miles of Money Ripples, he taught me to pay less attention to discounts and interest rates and more attention to cash flow. I shared this information with my parents so they could make the best decision for their financial plans and cash flow.
Managing debt is part of being an entrepreneur. Making payments on something can help your overall cash flow rather than thinking that it’s “bad” to have debt and to pay something in full.
Lesson #5: Ask questions when you don’t understand. Don’t tell yourself for a dang second that you “should know something” because you are afraid you will look stupid.
When you are being interrupted every 15 minutes with a nurse or someone new coming into the room to take vitals and they are talking in medical language you can’t understand, it can be overwhelming.
My mom was out of it. My dad was worried. And no one was asking questions of the “experts” rushing in and out of the room.
Then my sister and I got there. And I asked questions. Over and over again, until I understood it. The “experts” expected an immediate response from my mom on what could be life-altering decisions.
Since my mom was stable at this point, I encouraged my mom to ask questions and take a few minutes to consider all of the options and let them know what SHE wanted to do.
Lesson #6: You’ve got to make a decision and time is of the essence.
Based on the sighs and short replies from some of the nurses and other experts, I knew I was annoying them with my questions. And I didn’t care.
One nurse (who was my favorite) said “You have the right to refuse any treatment you don’t want.” She took the time to explain things. She listened to us. Either way my mom chose, she still needed to make the decision. Indecision is still a decision, but you avoid the accountability that determines your success.
Your decisions require urgency. Urgency is not to be confused with being rushed or hurried. It’s not about pressure based on what you “should” do, which is just a form of self judgment.
Urgency is letting in the truth of how important your life is and how big your legacy is. You never know if you will have a tomorrow so if you aren’t taking action NOW, then when? Do you really have more time to waste “thinking about it” or “waiting and seeing?”
I’m still processing this whole experience. I’m still crying off and on. I’m still baffled at how the hospital experience shined a light on my own life and business and challenged my own commitment to my priorities.
Everything is a mirror for what is either working in our lives or clearly not working. Experiences like this show us what are true priorities are.
One of my big punch-in-the-gut moments was realizing that so many people make life decisions based on what is in their bank account, myself included.
What treatment would you demand if your life depended on it, yet you didn’t know how you were going to pay for it?
If your business isn’t producing income, you’ve got to do what it takes. It will require you to get uncomfortable and talk to people about what you do. It’s cozy in the land of mindset and thinking about your mission. But mindset alone isn’t going to make you money.
The real impact you make in your own life and the options you give yourself is almost always supported by the level of how you invest in yourself (in other words, how profitable you are.)
I’m signing off until next week and enjoying the precious time with my family. My mom was discharged from the hospital late last night. And right now as I write this, I hear her playing with my niece Adelyn upstairs. Today and every day I am blessed.
